Kentucky Troubadour: The Rebel Collection

Don Rigsby has had a distinguished, if rather nomadic career over the four decades covered by this retrospective. He’s released a half dozen or so solo albums and been in and out of as many bands – J.D. Crowe, the Bluegrass Cardinals, the Lonesome River Band, Rock County, and Longview among them.

This rock-solid song sampler features 12 tracks from the Rebel vaults along with two favorites from Rigsby’s pre-Rebel days on the Sugar Hill label, re-recorded with his current band the Fly-By Knights: “Bad Day in Akron” and “Empty Old Mailbox.” It’s topped off by a brand-new reprise of Don Reno’s “Big Train,” featuring Don’s son Ronnie Reno on shared vocals.

Rigsby, a contemporary of Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley is, with his haunting tenor and stirring mandolin and fiddle playing, an embodiment of mountain soul. This shines through vividly on selections like “Harvest of My Heart” and his rendition of Bill Monroe’s “Mary Jane Won’t You Be Mine” – both cuts from his brief stint with Rock County. Ditto for “I Heard My Mother Weeping,” from his days with the group Longview.

Yet another stand-out, culled from back when he led the band Midnight Call, is a powerful mountain ballad called “Hillbilly Heartache.”

Other highlights include a lovely rendition of Bill Monroe’s oft-recorded “Kentucky Waltz” and a high-lonesome outing called “Harvest of My Heart.” There’s also “The Daughter of Geronimo,” a rustic duet with Ralph Stanley, drawn from Rigsby’s 2013 album-length tribute to Stanley, called Doctor’s Orders.

All told, this 15-song sampler illustrates Rigsby’s stature as one of modern bluegrass’s most gifted if sometimes overlooked, practitioners.